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Before she was the literary cool-girl icon that she is now, Sally Rooney burst onto the scene with her 2017 debut novel, Conversations with Friends. Rooney’s much-awaited second novel, Normal People (check out my review here), only cemented her position as the preeminent trendy millennial novelist. The highly successful limited-series adaptation of Normal People offered a boost in sales to the already bestselling novel, while it seems the same treatment might be in store for Conversations with Friends, which the BBC has already committed to adapting. Conversations with Friends defines many of the themes that Rooney continued to explore in Normal People: concepts of sexuality, socioeconomic privilege, Irish identity, and the traumas of tumultuous home life.
The novel features a bewitching whip-smart protagonist: Frances, a 21-year old student at Trinity College who is interested in writing, and entirely uninterested in finding full time employment at any point in the future. Frances performs spoken word poetry with her closest friend and former love interest Bobbi, a gorgeous firebrand feminist who is confident in ways that Frances is not. The pair begin spending time with an older couple, Nick and Melissa, when Melissa, a moderately famous essay writer and photographer, expresses interest in writing a profile of the spoken word poetry duo. Bobbi is immediately smitten with Melissa, a cool and witty artist, while Frances begins a strange flirtation with Melissa’s handsome husband Nick, which eventually turns into a full blown affair. Nick and Frances’ affair is a tumultuous journey of hurt and betrayal, one that allows Frances to more clearly understand herself and her moral proclivities.
The young Frances struggles throughout the novel to come to a concrete realization of her own identity. At one point she remarks, “Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a ‘real personality,’ but she said she meant it as a compliment. Mostly I agreed with her assessment. At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterward think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.” She seems to consistently mischaracterize herself, masquerading as an emotionally distant or cold person (“I just don’t have feelings concerning whether you fuck your wife or not. It’s not an emotive topic for me.”), when in reality, she often hurts very deeply. The revelation that Nick has begun sleeping with his wife again tears her apart, marking just one in a series of incidents where Frances physically harms herself when she feels her body to be particularly useless. She often uses her staggering intelligence as a mask to hide her emotions, a defense mechanism against her struggles to belong or relate to others.
Much more interesting than the central relationship between Frances and Nick, is the relationship between Frances and Bobbi. Bobbi is clearly a north star for Frances, someone her emotions and ideations always seem to orbit. The main falling out between Frances and Bobbi happens when Bobbi gets a hold of the short story that Frances has written with her as the main character, that she has submitted to a literary magazine without Bobbi’s approval. Bobbi remarks upon reading that she’s “learned more about [Frances’s] feelings in the last twenty minutes than in the last four years.” It seems that despite all of the valuable conversations that the two girls have about world politics, communism, and ethics, Bobbi resents Frances’ refusal to emote or share. While Bobbi and Frances’ relationship is a true marriage of minds, Bobbi understands that Frances is alway withholding, never sharing the whole story.
Frances struggles to disclose a couple of major concerns to Bobbi, choosing instead to confide in the passive Nick. She first tells Nick about her alcoholic father and the financial struggles that result from his inability to provide her with her promised allowance. She also first tells Nick about her endometriosis diagnosis, which she even conceals from her mother. Frances uses Nick as a diary, a place to store her darkest secrets from the people she really loves, namely Bobbi. In that way it seems that Frances is perhaps deceiving herself when she claims to be in love with Nick, who feels most like a repository for her guilt and pain rather than an actual love interest. Rooney has crafted a fascinating portrayal of personal relationships drawn into conflict, one that doesn’t shy away from issues of depression, self-harm, and chronic illness. With her signature wit and trademark emotional intelligence, Rooney has crafted an immensely readable debut that offers an exciting modernization of the Irish literary tradition.
Further Reading: If you loved this one, Sally Rooney’s follow-up, Normal People, hits many of the same notes. If you’re looking for a similarly witty novel featuring complex romantic relationships, also written by a young Irish female author, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times is an excellent debut.